Great Western Coffee Shop

I'm headed for Portsmouth on 27th (Thursday) - 09:10 from Melksham, change at Westbury ... back in the evening.  Silly-cheap tickets bought at the start or last month. Stories will be told, no doubt, and happy to meet up / see friends along the way - not yet planned what to do at destination.  Not sure yet whether to travel to Portsmouth and Southsea or Portsmouth Harbour; Portsmouth Arms would have been a different ticket.

Were you thinking of taking a bike?

I wasn't ... until you sewed the thought.  Would need to get a puncture fixed on the electric one.  Think I am too unfit for unpowered these days. Is the ferry running to Hayling Island?

The Hayling Ferry should be back in operation tomorrow, after an extended outage for a new engine and its annual MCA inspection. https://www.facebook.com/haylingferry/ (https://www.facebook.com/haylingferry/) https://www.haylingferry.net/ (https://www.haylingferry.net/)

Possibilities if you are electric, and you can go slow enough for someone on geriatric leg power are:

• Fareham to Gosport ferry down the old railway line, possibly including the Stokes Bay branch
• Gosport ferry/Old Portsmouth along sea front to Eastney and Hayling ferry
• Hayling ferry to Havant along old railway line

I think each leg is about 10 kms. I prefer it if it is an westerly wind, old legs prefer a tail wind. Otherwise I personally would do it the other way round.

Even if you only do one or two legs there is plenty to see in this area. I have never tried tracing the Southsea Railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southsea_Railway (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southsea_Railway). Seeing as it closed over 100 years ago in a heavily built-up (and bombed) area there is unlikely to be much evidence.

My posting here is not specific to any future journey to Portsmouth, but I have been encouraged by those above posts to consider taking my own mountain bike to Melksham, next time I travel there on a train.

A couple of such journeys ago, I managed to convey a surf board from Nailsea & Backwell to Melksham on the trains without any untoward incident (that's a rather long story: grahame knows why! ;D), so my bike should be a doddle. ;)

Hadn't thought of Melksham in terms of surfing. You live and learn!

Melksham to Portsmouth possibly involves the Cardiff train, normally no bike facilities but tends to be room from Southampton. The problem to Southampton tends to cruises, but there is only one on 27th.

After my previous post I couldn't remember if Graham has a folding e-bike, if so he could get the bus between the Gosport ferry and the Hayling ferry.

I did the Millennium Promenade Walk a few years ago and was pleased that I did.  The route is literally set into the pavement so is easy to follow.

https://www.visitportsmouth.co.uk/things-to-do/millennium-promenade-p276841

To be fair, it wasn't actually a surfboard - rather, it was a foldable display table of very similar proportions. It was a bit of an 'in-joke' at the time. ;)


Graham did have a folding e-bike, but it was stolen from them while it was being used by his Ukrainian refugee house-guests.  ::)

The folding one was far too heavy to be practical to lift when folded.  It was replaced by a none-folding one which I think has a puncture - tyre very low when I came back from Subway.  Our guests all had bikes and they didn't take them when they moved on;  been a busy couple of days (five things in my diary today, including three meetings) and I'll be taking a look and sorting out over the next 48 hours.